The Air Pollution Control Board voted Friday to defer its decision on Dominion Energy’s permit for the Buckingham Compressor Station, a 54,000 horsepower industrial facility proposed for the historic Union Hill community in Buckingham County, which is designed to pump fracked-gas through Dominion’s controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

As this deferral was made, the tide continues to turn away from the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project. Wednesday, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a stay of the pipeline’s Nationwide Permit 12 authorization to cross water bodies along its path.

In response, Kate Addleson, Director of the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, released the following statement.

“The Board is correct: Virginia should carefully consider the true effects and environmental justice impacts for every project. Buckingham residents should not have to bear the brunt of the awful effects and pollution from this unnecessary industrial site.

“The reason our Air Board is made up of citizen experts and functions as an independent entity is to ensure that decisions are not made exclusively by those with ulterior or political motives.

“The concerns expressed by the Board warrant the use of their full authority to deny the permit for this dirty and dangerous compressor station.

“People from across the commonwealth have come together to stand up and call out the injustice of this compressor station, and they have made it clear to the Board that environmental injustice won’t stand in Virginia. Community members, activists and environmentalists have fought side-by-side for years to end the dirty and destructive Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipeline projects, and will not stand down until the project is defeated.”